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Lately there’s been something of an explosion of babies in advertising. I don’t mean adverts featuring exploding babies. That would be amazing. Too amazing to ever exist, God dammit. I mean I can’t turn on the TV lately without being subjected to the sight of a baby doing something that babies can’t actually do. Dance, talk, operate high tech weaponry; the lot.

Even when advertising a product directly relating to babies I find the use of actual babies in the adverts to be somewhat disturbing. I’ve not been ‘blessed’ with children so I can’t say for sure; but I’m pretty certain that when I’m done cleaning up my kid’s shit with baby wipes, the last thing I’m going to be doing is kissing their arse cheek like it’s the FA Cup.

Don’t even get me started on the ugly God damn babies they use for these adverts. Just don’t.

My most hated baby advert at the moment is for Aptamil “Growing Up Milk.” This product is supposedly the ideal thing to use if you don’t want your baby to shrivel up and die like a leaf in autumn when you stop breast feeding.

But wait. What word have I used there? “WHEN” you stop breast feeding?

No, no, no! As Aptamil would have it; “IF you decide to move on from breast feeding…” Jesus Christ, Aptamil! Are you implying that there are mothers out there who aren’t ever going to stop breast feeding? EVER? You creepy fucks. When I go home to visit my mother I’m happy with a bacon sandwich and a cup of tea, thank you very much.

How they can make amends

They can pay my therapy bills until I no longer suffer from the effects of the mental image they have created.

Confused.com

When it comes to having a history of infuriating advertising campaigns, Confused.com are pretty much the lords and masters. That Go Compare advert with the fat guy singing is well up there as far as irritating adverts go, but it’s only been on our screens for a short while compared to the amount of time confused.com has been annoying people.

They change the concepts of their adverts fairly regularly so perhaps we should credit them with at least realising how stupid they are. The current advertising campaign features their logo – a retarded scarecrow creature – coming to life and singing a variety of pop tunes with all of her cartoon friends. That’s right, I said “her” friends. Now, hands up who thought that the character on the confused.com logo was a woman. Anyone? Remember, we’re talking about this thing:

It looks like something a school child doodled while waiting for their detention to end. Nice professionalism, confused.com. I’m sorry, but I don’t buy insurance off anyone that gets their kid to do all the work for them. My application form would probably be returned to me with a note saying “3/10 see me after class.”

But the most annoying confused.com advert, historically speaking, was the one with the insurance customers looking smugly into the camera and declaring “I’m confused.com.” So what are you so smug about? Being confused? With all the level of pride that a child displays when they’ve just learned to use the big boy toilet, people are declaring themselves incompetent. Fantastic!

Presumably the idea was that through the power of confused.com people are able to reach a satisfying conclusion in their search for an insurance deal. Before using confused.com no doubt they were pulling their hair out, had at least one rotating eyeball, had misplaced their nose and managed to contort their lips into an impossible squiggle shape (as per the logo.) I’m glad the customers are pleased with their outcome, but do they have to be so unbearably smug about it??

The irritation of this advert actually runs deeper. I can’t say for sure, but I strongly suspect that this advert saw the first use of the suffix “dotcom” in this particular way. Since then I have had to put up with everyone and their mother declaring on their Facebook statuses “bored.com” or “tired.com” and so on. I can happily say, without danger of hyperbole, that the next time I see someone use “.com” to end a description of their mood I will go out, find a gun and just start shooting. Killingspree.com.